Macro chatter: Yuan bond set for London debut

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 15: Investor Warren Buffett is presented with the 2010 Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Barack Obama during an East Room event at the White House February 15, 2011 in Washington, DC.

HSBC's bond would be the first offshore yuan-denominated bond issued in London, which is battling Hong Kong for a greater share of the yuan trade. It also would be the first time a yuan-denominated bond was sold outside of London or Hong Kong.

Meanwhile in China, home prices fell in more than half the cities tracked by the Chinese government, Bloomberg said.

“The good news is that I’ve been told by my doctors that my condition is not remotely life-threatening or even debilitating in any meaningful way,” Buffett said in a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

Buffett was diagnosed April 11. An MRI Tuesday showed the cancer hadn’t spread. The 81-year-old said he feels great, as if he were in his “normal excellent health.” Buffett said he would let shareholders know immediately should his health change.

"Eventually, of course, it will; but I believe that day is a long way off," he wrote.

Dull but important:
Spain’s government isn’t quite as deeply in debt as Greece or Italy’s, but its households aren’t doing so well. Gross household debt in Spain now stands at 126 percent of income, my colleague Paul Ames writes. Pre-recession, that figure was at 80 percent.

That “lonely BlackBerry store” is in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills and is RIM’s last in North America. It opened in 2007, six years after the first Apple store.

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